Four New Hampshire daycare employees allegedly spiked children’s food with the sleep supplement melatonin and were arrested on Thursday.
After a six-month investigation, police discovered that children had been furtively dosed with melatonin. Officers arrested the daycare owner, 52-year-old Sally Dreckmann, along with three of her employees: Traci Innie, 51; Kaitlin Filardo and Jessica Foster, who are both 23.
Melatonin is a sleep aid supplement that is sold over the counter. But the long-term impacts of melatonin on children are not widely known.
Furthermore, there have been several reports of children being overdosed with melatonin in recent years. About 7% of emergency department visits between 2012 and 2021 were for children who had accidentally ingested melatonin, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine issued a health warning for melatonin use around kids and adolescents, warning against the lack of US Food and Drug Administration oversight for the sleep aid.
The FDA considers melatonin supplements as a food additive, not a drug. Again, why exactly would it be considered illegal?
No, they don’t. It’s considered a dietary supplement, which thanks to the Supplement lobby is notoriously unregulated.
And FWIW I don’t think that you pointing out how special interests lobbies have created any entire industry built on the manufacturering and mass marketing of unregulated supplements and chemicals somehow supports the idea that their safe for kids to consume, or to be dosed with by unlicensed daycare workers.
Never said anything about this was safe. I was making the point that it’s probably not illegal.
A point you supported by saying melatonin was considered a food, or food additive, which it’s not.
It is legally considered a supplement, which are not FDA regulated, and because it’s used to alter a persons mind and behavior, it is a psychotropic.
So are you saying it’s not, or shouldn’t be, illegal for unlicensed daycare workers to secretly dose children’s food with unregulated psychotropic supplements?
Whether it should or shouldn’t be illegal is irrelevant as to whether it is illegal. Should it be? Probably. Currently, it isn’t.
…it absolutely is illegal to provide OTC substances to children in your daycare without a signed release from each parent.
As it’s so clearly illegal, I was genuinely curious if your comment crusade was because you had a moral objection to it being illegal…hence my asking for clarification.
Additionally, this was an unlicensed daycare, and there might be additional restrictions in place regulating the dispensing of any substance to children, but you can look up the relevant NH regulations if you’re curious.
Curiously, they weren’t charged with giving kids in their care melatonin. Hmm.
You realize that if they dosed the kids with hydromorphone they wouldn’t be charged with “giving kids in their care hydromorphone”, right?
If Fred commits murder by putting a bag over his victims head, he isn’t charged with “placing a bag over the victim’s head”. He’s charged with murder.
These people endangered the safety of the children in their care, by secretly dosing them with psychotropic substances, en masse, and without their parents knowledge, or permission. Their actions endangered those children’s safety, which is what they were arrested for.